Senate Republicans on Friday accused the White House of unfairly dicing its stats on regulations in a way that makes President Barack Obama look better than his predecessor.

In a blog post, the Republican Policy Committee agreed with White House regulatory chief Cass Sunstein’s comments this week at a POLITICO Breakfast event that fewer final regulations have been issued under Obama during his first three years than under George W. Bushin his first three years in office.

But the White House Office of Management and Budget shot back Friday afternoon saying the GOP instead cooked their numbers.

During their respective initial three years, the White House told POLITICO that 931 final rules were reviewed by the White House and issued by executive agencies under Bush compared with 886 under Obama.

“It’s important to get the facts straight about the Administration’s record: the net benefits of regulations issued through the three fiscal years of the Obama Administration have exceeded $91 billion,” OMB spokesman Kenneth Baer told POLITICO in an email.

“This amount, including not only monetary savings but also lives saved and injuries prevented, is over 25 times the net benefits through the first three fiscal years of the Bush Administration,” he added. “And this was achieved while issuing fewer final rules than the previous Administration.”

But Republicans argued Friday that hidden in those figures is that Obama has finalized 230 “economically significant” regulations — those having an impact of $100 million or more — 79 more than Bush.

Republicans also took issue with the pace of Obama’s regulatory reform efforts, saying that only one “economically significant” regulation — the one that treated spilled milk much like that of an oil spill — has been pulled so far.

In total, the reform program, which the White House has said will have an estimated savings of $10 billion over 10 years, has yielded only $200 million so far, according to the the GOP.

An OMB official said that the term “economically significant” was being misused by the GOP.

“Economically significant” is not a good measure of how a regulation might burden the economy for two reasons, official said. First, a rule can be economically significant even if it has $100 million or more in annual benefits, not just costs. Moreover, many funds given out at the direction of Congress — so-called “transfer rules” — also count as economically significant.

The official also smacked down the GOP accusation that Obama’s regulatory reform program was more talk than action.

“A basic understanding of the regulatory process would uncover that – by law and long-standing executive practice — there is a deliberate process that can take years before regulatory action of any kind can be finalized in order to get public comment and to analyze the science and economics of each rule,” they said.

Earlier this week, the OMB announced that it was giving new direction to federal agencies to “avoid redundant, conflicting, or overly burdensome requirements.”

And the official pointed to final action taken this week on a Labor Department rule that would mean $2.5 billion in savings over five years.